Assessment, management, and treatment of sex offenders: What is known, what is controversial, what needs further investigation

Sex offending is considered one of the most offensive crimes in Western societies. This article presents a description of the advances in scientific and clinical studies in the understanding of sexual offending, with particular attention to risk and criminogenic needs, sexual recidivism and its assessment. It offers an overview of the treatment programmes that work most efficiently, of those that are promising, and of those that do not seem to work, and why. Much can be learnt about sex offenders from using criminal career information, and from assessing the risk dimensionally, in order to identify accurately the level of risk and the criminogenic needs that require intervention. What is relevant it is not simply the nature of the sex crime, but to what extent the criminal career is specialised or heterogeneous, and persistent or occasional. The importance of accurately assessing the risk is relevant in psycho-criminological as well as in clinical settings because risk assessment is a scientific practice that is informative for addressing specific and individualised treatment. Further research needs to be carried out especially in those countries in which a great deal has to be learnt about assessing differential risk and evaluating the efficacy of treatment programmes.